Wrought Iron Heart
by Miss Mungoe
Summary: He'd been left to rust, a fitting penance for his failure. But it's not his Creator's hands that bring him back – these warm, calloused palms drawing life from cold mechanical limbs. She's his Saviour, and sometimes she makes him forget he is not of her kind. – Gajeel/Levy; based off blanania's humanoid-robot!AU.
1. Saviour

AN: So the lovely **blanania** on tumblr has given me permission to write a fic about her wonderful Gajeel/Levy humanoid-robot!AU, and this is the result! This will be a fic in two parts, and I'm coordinating my writing with Grace's illustrations so you should all check them out first.

The setting is this: _"Centuries into the future, when humanoids are used for many purposes, including war, Kurogane – a warrior humanoid from Phantom Lord – lost a fight and was abandoned, buried in layers of snow and ready to rust. However, Levy McGarden – a humanoid professor and mechanic working for Fairy Tail Inc. – found him and named him "Gajeel". A new life for Gajeel began, but also new dangers as the former army are coming for him and his saviour." _

Disclaimer: Fairy Tail and its characters belong to Hiro Mashima; I own absolutely nothing. This AU idea and the artwork this story is based on, as well as the cover image, belongs to Grace (tumblr's blanania); I'm just playing around in her sandbox.

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**Wrought Iron Heart **

by Miss Mungoe

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_part 1: saviour_

Gajeel knew war.

He knew it in the marrow of his artificial bones – knew it like an organic being knew how to move and laugh and breathe. It resonated in every metal-wrought arch and joint, like the sing of blood in coils like veins – the very essence of his being. He'd been created by it, moulded by it, and he'd lived by it. As much as a humanoid could really live_, _anyway.

Then she'd dug him out of that snow bank, and living had been given a whole new meaning. It was her calloused mechanic's hands that had put him back together, and her laughter was a command unlike any he'd ever known, not ordering but compelling him to mimic the quirk of her expressive mouth. Hers was the will that had brought him back from the brink, and hers the kindness that had seen more in his empty shell than a machine whose sole purpose was war and mindless destruction. His Creator had given him a form, a drive and a purpose in the form of warfare, but the mechanic – _Levy_ – had given him life.

And for her sake, he'd give it up in a beat of his mechanical heart.

* * *

"If we keep going down this way, we'll be backing ourselves into a corner – there's no way out." Levy ran a hand through her hair as she paced, but the cramped space of the corridor granted little room for her anxious steps. She'd lost her tool belt somewhere along the way and her hands twitched at her sides, restless without a weapon to hold. She wasn't a fighter to begin with, but even a mechanic would feel empty-handed going up against a group of enemy mechs the size of the one hot on their trail.

"She's right," Lily agreed, calm as always, but Gajeel could pick out the erratic leap of his pulse, and the rigid lines of his flesh shoulder that betrayed his composed demeanour. "And if we linger here, they'll catch up."

Gajeel rifled through his memory for ideas, but found instead a rather impressive dictionary of cuss words. He didn't feel panic – he wasn't programmed to, and for all the adjustments shortstack had made she hadn't tampered with _that._ But though he didn't feel it, that didn't mean he didn't understand the severity of the situation. If he'd still had his old combat function, he could have cut his way through the solid concrete walls boxing them in, or even taken on the group heading towards them, but he had none of his old weapons, and they couldn't take on a small army of enemy mechs bare-handed.

Regret, too, was a feeling he hadn't been programmed to recognize, but he could not stop thinking about what would have happened if they hadn't left for the dig in the first place – if they'd just stayed in Magnolia, cooped up in Levy's workshop. But the logical part of his mind pointed out that there was no way they could have known there would be an army of Phantom Lord humanoids waiting for them at the dig site. The abandoned mech factory had suddenly swarmed with Phantoms, but they'd managed to escape, although by the looks of things they'd been successfully herded into a trap; there was no breaking through the walls by any means they had at their disposal.

Levy looked at him then, eyes wide and pleading for a plan he didn't have, and he was reminded of the first time he'd seen her, though her eyes had been full of excitement then, on a day her dig had been successful, and death hadn't been hot on their heels.

"Gajeel?" There was a tremble in her voice, one he wasn't used to, and he'd heard and catalogued every pitch and lilt from the moment he'd first heard it.

"_...this wire..."_

"_...if I attach it...the power circuit..."_

_He registered the touch – the warmth of human hands, a persistent tug at his circuitry that sent a jolt through his system and his eyes flew open– _

"_Holy sh–"_

"_Levy, get back!"_

_His vision was shrouded in darkness, and whatever had woken him was out of his line of sight, although he could pick out their heat signatures, and feel their movements on the air. Three people, by his estimation, though he didn't fully trust how operational his system was. From the temperature they were inside somewhere – the echo indicated a cramped space, sound-proofed walls, cement floors. But his eyes, though open, were unseeing. _

"_Wait – no, wait, Jet, let me just–" _

_Something **connected**, he could feel the jolt, and then there was light – light and something very bright and very blue, and when his vision adjusted he could make out a pair of wide, curious eyes – human eyes not humanoid, living and vivid and bright with **life** not the cold unsympathetic gaze of the enemy looking down the glare of a blaster ray– _

"_Hello?" _

_A warm palm against the side of his face and he couldn't move, rooted to his seat by something other than the power cables attached to his interface, but there was no fear in her eyes, only curiosity, and excitement brimming along the edges. He vaguely made note of two shapes lingering at her back, unease vivid in their rigid stances, but he couldn't draw his gaze from the human girl crouched before him. _

"_Can you understand me?" she asked then. "Do you understand Common?" _

_Kurogane nodded, the command racing easily through his system. They must have fixed him, because the last thing he remembered before waking up was not being able to move. _

_Eager pleasure lit up over her face at his sign of understanding. "We dug you out of a snow bank – you were frozen, but you're all thawed now and I did some work on your circuitry and your coils, and I removed and fixed some functions, replaced them with new ones–oh, I'm so sorry! My name is Levy. Levy McGarden, I'm a mechanic, you see, and we found you on a dig. What's your name?"_

_Her enthusiastic speech had left her cheeks flushed, but her eyes glittered and she was so close he could feel the heat from her hands. But her words left him baffled. "Name?"_

_She frowned. "Yes, your name. What are you called?"_

_He realized what she was asking for, but didn't point out that names were for humans – his kind were only given numbers, or titles if they pleased their Creator. _

"_Kurogane," he said then, after a pause, and watched as her brows furrowed. _

"_That's...not much of a name." _

"_Humanoids aren't given names." _

_Her frown deepened at that. "Maybe not where you're from, but ours are."_

_He glanced around him then, wondering for the first time where he was, and who she worked for. The facilities were too nice for her to be a freelancer, unless she was rich. "Ours?" he said instead, as he looked back at her. _

_She grinned. "Fairy Tail Inc. You must have heard of us – I recognized your...signature." She fumbled over the words, and he wondered at her wince. She should have just called it what it was – his Creator's mark, the claim of ownership. "You were part of Phantom Lord." _

_He wanted to point out that 'part of' was a bit of a stretch, and that it was closer to 'belonged to', but she was operating with a whole new set of terms he wasn't familiar with, and it threw him off. She'd said their humanoids had names, for one, although considering who she worked for, that probably wasn't much of a surprise. _

"_Fairy Tail?" He knew the name, of course – everyone did, humanoid or not. A soft bunch, the rumours went. They treated their mechs like partners and not like weapons. It was ridiculous, and bordering on insulting. He certainly wasn't human. _

_She nodded. "We're a bit...different. I hope that's not a problem?" _

_There was a sarcastic remark at the back of his mind – a particular idiosyncrasy he'd picked up from his former owner. Did she just insinuate he had a choice, even if he objected? She'd reprogrammed him, he could feel it – like a missing lib, she'd deactivated his combat function. He was a shell now, useless in battle. A glorified, massive metal paperweight. Or a hatstand if she so pleased. And if she was a mechanic worth her salt, she'd had a function built in to shut him down in a heartbeat if he so much as lifted a hand against her. _

"_No, 's no problem." _

_She beamed, happily ignorant of his inability to protest even if he'd wanted to. But she didn't seem a bad sort, and being a hatstand was probably better than being buried beneath the snow, anyway. _

"_Great!" _

_Then she grabbed hold of his hand, cheerfully ignoring his entire body jerking in surprise as she pulled it towards her. There was a pen in her other hand – the kind used to engrave a Creator's signature on their creations, but she didn't do that. Instead she scribbled something else across the back of his hand. _

"_Kurogane doesn't suit you," she explained, eyes focused so intently on what she was writing. "Let's call you 'Gajeel'."_

"_Gajeel?"_

_She nodded, and drew back to admire her handiwork with a pleased smile. When he pulled his hand back, he lifted it to look at what she'd written. And sure enough, there it was, in neat letters across the metal. _

"_Not gonna put your own signature?" he asked, glancing back up, only to find her smiling still. _

"_It's not mine to give," she said with a shrug of her shoulders. "We don't claim ownership here. But we do offer partnership." _

_Then she held out her hand, tiny and smeared with oil, with grime under her blunt fingernails. He stared at it, uncomprehending, and when he looked up to meet her gaze there was a question there, like she genuinely believed he did have a choice in the matter. _

"_Will you be my partner, Gajeel?" _

"Gajeel?"

He looked at them then, the both of them – odd companions who'd made space for themselves in his mind and his memory, who'd given him a name and a place in their own, quite despite the fact that he wasn't of their kind. An old ragged army commander, half man and half machine, and a mechanic with enough affection in her reckless human heart to give life to a humanoid weapon. They were everything in his meagre existence, and looking at them, their fragile human lives teetering on the edge and with the enemy just around the corner, Gajeel knew what to do.

He looked at Lily then. "Take her."

The old commander's frown deepened, but he didn't waste time arguing, though Gajeel didn't doubt he wanted to. Instead he simply nodded, and without a word went to pick up the mechanic. "Wh– Lily what are you _doing_–" she squeaked as he hoisted her up, but didn't offer any protests, only wiggled around in his grip until she could meet Gajeel's eyes. Confusion was evident in the furrow between her brows, and he wondered suddenly if she'd ever forgive him for what he was about to do.

"Gajeel? What's going on?"

Gajeel didn't drop her gaze. "The wall is thick, but it's not impenetrable. A good explosion should make a hole big enough for an escape."

She rolled her eyes at that. "I _know_, but we don't have any explosives or we would have–" she stopped herself, and he watched the confusion melt away to understanding.

And then horror. "_No_–!"

Lily held her in place as she thrashed, clawing at his arms and kicking her legs, but she'd always been such a small thing and her resistance made little difference. "You can't–you said you wouldn't go back to being a weapon! You–"

"I'm not."

He smiled then – made his artificial muscles obey the memory of her patient tutoring, the fond roll of her eyes as she'd explained the human practice of showing humour and contentment, the curve and quirk of a mouth that could mean so many different things. And she'd showed him even when she hadn't been actively teaching him – fond smiles and excited ones reserved for brand new pieces of mech she could take apart; patient smiles and smiles reserved only for him. He'd catalogued them all, and aside from the colour of her eyes it was the one predominant memory he had of her, stored away where war and battle had once taken up so much space in his mind.

The breath went out of her. "You– you're smiling."

He shrugged – another gesture he'd picked up, but this mostly from Lily, who did an excessive amount of it in defence of his gossipmongering and general meddling nature. "I'm not a weapon," he said then. "Not anymore."

She shook her head, ready to protest, but he held up a hand to halt the words on her tongue. His gaze lingered a moment at the name she'd carved into the metal, and the one he'd engraved himself beneath it. Her name, like a Creator's signature, but different. He was hers, but by his own decision. He hadn't showed it to her yet, but there wasn't any time for that now.

"This ain't an action that's been programmed into me," he said then, hoping she'd understand. "It's a _choice._ You told me to make my own decisions, that that's why you reprogrammed me."

His changed the curve of his mouth – a _smirk_ she'd called that, and her textbook definition had been 'the kind of smile that follows a wry comment, or suggests self-satisfaction or smugness'. It wasn't a very self-satisfied moment, but had the setting been different he imagined he could have felt a little smug at his own reasoning. It went to show how much she'd taught him.

Sounds of the approaching humanoids from Phantom Lord broke the stunned silence that had settled between them, and Gajeel nodded at Lily, a silent order, but despite his assurance she called after him to_ stop, come back don't leave me __don't you dare leave me __**don't you dare–**_

Her voice grew faint as he put distance between them, enough to make them clear of the blast radius. He'd always known about the inner explosive mechanism – the kind built into all Phantom Lord units to ensure their secrets died with their humanoids, to keep the enemy from gathering the parts and the memory discs. There'd be no putting him back together after this, Gajeel knew – knew it like a truth embedded deep into his circuitry. It was designed specifically to destroy the part of him that made him operational, and the part that made him who he was. If humanoids had souls, or their equivalent of, triggering the explosive would eradicate it.

The steady thrum of the approaching group of mechs shuddered through him, a steady _drum drum drum _of drones against the hard ground underfoot, but he drew his attention away from it, letting his mind focus on the thought of her – the concentrated wrinkle between her brows as she worked on her projects, and the sound of her laughter loud like a bell and shrieking when he hoisted her up unexpectedly to help her reach the top shelves in her workshop. He let his mind settle on that sound, to drown out the desperate calls for him to _come back don't leave,_ as his hands skimmed over the wall. The blast would do it – it would have to; they had no other escape. Lily would get her to safety, he knew, but this – _this_ was his job. Gajeel's job, not Kurogane's. He'd left the title behind, and he was taking the new one to whatever afterlife awaited his kind.

_Sorry, Shorty. _

The mechanism was activated with a thought, and then all he could see was light. Light, blinding, burning, searing, _scorching_ light. And in his mind as it tore apart, the blue of her hair and the endless dark of her grinning eyes.

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AN: Make sure you all check out Grace's art! Part 2 will be posted in correspondence with her next round of illustrations, so stay tuned.


	2. Salvager

AN: Grace is such a joy to work with, and I'm so glad to have been given the chance to hear her headcanons for this 'verse and then to write about them. I hope you enjoy the second part of our collective effort; the next round of art will be posted on her tumblr, so keep a lookout!

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_part 2: salvager _

Levy knew humanoids.

Though it wasn't so much knowing as it was a sense of sorts – she'd had a knack for machinery since she'd first picked up a spanner, and no one had been surprised she'd chosen her path to walk amongst the rubble of war and mechs, to salvage broken parts to put them back together.

She was good at that – putting things back together.

She wasn't a Creator – she'd never made something of her own, never built a humanoid from scratch and put her name to it as proof of her skill. No, Levy McGarden was a Salvager, and proud of it – cheerfully unashamed of an occupation many had trouble distinguishing from scavenging, like she was some common Mech Pirate out for a dirty job and easy cash. She'd never done it for the money, but then she'd always been uncomfortable with the practice of creating and selling humanoids like cattle. There was life there, amidst the machinery and the wires. There'd been life in _him. _But he'd given it away.

For her.

* * *

"Levy. _Levy._"

She didn't look up at the voice as she set to digging, gloved hands tugging futilely at too-large slabs of concrete, her anger welling up to a sob pressing at the back of her throat, until she couldn't breathe.

A hand on her shoulder, mechanical fingers curling around the curved joint, drew her back, and she forced air back into her lungs, past the lump that seemed to have taken up permanent residence. Tugging off her glove, she wiped at her eyes, and offered a thoroughly unconvincing _"I'm fine"_ before she pulled it back on and got back to work.

Lily's sigh bore the weight of words he didn't speak, but he didn't stop her or pull her back, and then the hand was gone from her shoulders, before they replaced her own to lift away the slab with ease. Still he said nothing, and she didn't offer her thanks, her grief too raw and her gratitude too fragile to shape into words. Her assurances were empty and she was a terrible liar on a good day, but she persisted anyway, lying to him and to herself, claiming she was fine she was alright she'd be better _everything would be __**better**__. _

Her breath hitched in her throat as her eyes caught sight of something gleaming amidst the rubble, and she shoved her goggles up to her forehead as she dove for the object, lodged between two large pieces of the wall that had once stood there–

–_Lily **no**, put me down! Put me down, I can't–" But the words were lost in the wail that escaped her as the explosion shook the complex, the light blinding her eyes and her ears rang with the keening sound of a burst eardrum. There were hands over her head, tucking her face away, and she couldn't tell up from down as they moved along the uneven ground. Lily's breathing was a rasp at the edge of her hearing, and she caught a muttered word, sharp and explosive and vicious – a lament and a curse, torn and broken like the ravaged land around them. _

_Something thick and heavy coiled in her stomach, mingling with the smell in her nose – fire and concrete and the sting of molten metal sharp like a knife, and tears stung her eyes as she found herself carried away, out of the building and down a slope and into the sparse greenery. Out a hole that hadn't been there, into a freedom she didn't deserve. _

_Her voice was hoarse from the smoke and her tears, but no matter how much she clawed at the arms pinning her in place, they wouldn't budge. But she'd wiggled enough to press her eyes open, catching a glimpse of the burning rubble of the building they'd been trapped in, caged like prey until– _

"_**Gajeel!" **_

Lily's hands were there to aid her then, mismatched fingers prying the concrete away for her to rescue the part –_ a part of him a part of him there's a part of him and if there's a part she can find another and __**put them back together. **_But her joy was short-lived as she realized she wasn't holding a crucial part of his interface, but what remained of an arm – cut off at the elbow-joint, plates missing and wires all tangled; a hand with a few missing fingers–

–_like this. Look." She carefully wound their fingers together, metal and skin and joints of bone and titanium, a wicker-work of their differences. He stared at it intently, eyes focused on the back of his hand, and she watched him curiously. _

"_Do you like it?"_

_He glanced up, then back at their interwoven hands. "It's a name," he said at length, as though that explained everything. _

_Levy smiled. "It's your name," she said. "If you don't like it, that's okay – you can change it. It could be anything you want." _

_He tugged at his hand suddenly, an odd reflex, as though to keep her from touching it, and seemed to have forgotten her fingers twined with his own. It was a strangely protective thing, and she had to hide her growing smile. _

"_No," he said. "'S fine. The name." _

_She curled her fingers, squeezing, the gesture one of assurance though by the surprised look on his face not once he recognized. And her laughter was a trill in her chest, her mirth a wild, bright thing as he tried to tug his hand away again. Levy only curled her fingers tighter, a promise at the tip of her tongue that she wouldn't let go. But she kept the words to herself, and vowed to teach him the names of gestures and looks, until he could read her affection on her face, and in the gentle grip of her hand. _

The name was still there, carved into the metal like she remembered. The one she'd given him on a whim, because she'd never heard of a humanoid without a name and he'd never had one to call his own. She remembered taking his hand and etching the letters into the metal, a little piece of her, but a gift rather than a mark of ownership.

She didn't remember signing her own name, but there it was, looking up at her below the one she'd written, in a hand so neat and orderly it could only be a humanoid's.

"Levy?"

The metal was cold under her fingertips – _odd_, the thought came, a detached thing amidst the surge in her ears. She'd always imagined him warm, a trick of her own mind, perhaps, but it was strange holding a part of him in her hands, still and cold like any other piece of machinery she'd gathered at a dig, and nothing like one of the hands she'd taught the value of hard labour and safekeeping.

"_This is better than fighting, right?" _

_Balancing on her toes, tongue caught between her teeth, she tried to push the box onto the shelf, but it sat just out of her reach. A sudden pressure at her waist was all the warning she got before she was suddenly lifted up, and a yelp escaped her as her feet left the ground, before she was hovering before the shelf, the box clutched to her chest. _

"_Gajeel!"_

_He raised a brow – a quirk she'd bet all the books in her library he'd picked up from Lily. "Looked like you needed a hand." _

_She tried to stifle the blush, and turned her face away as she slid the box onto the shelf. "Yes, well," she coughed. "A word of warning would have been nice," she murmured. _

_He didn't move, and she glanced down. "Gajeel? You –uh, you can put me down, now." _

_The hands slid up her sides, but she held back any sound as she was placed back on her feet, cheeks aflame and suddenly his presence was undeniable where he loomed behind her. She spun around, a hand at her ear, to push her hair behind it. It was a nervous gesture she'd had for as long as she could remember, and she saw his eyes flicker to the side of her face, before they were back on hers. _

"_You're nervous." _

_She startled, hand halting at her ear. "N-no I'm not." _

_There was that raised brow again, and she swore she'd loosen every screw in Lily's mech arm for teaching him that. "You don't make me nervous, Gajeel," she stressed, but jumped when his hand was suddenly at her ear, fingers brushing against her hair. _

"_You're not scared?"_

_She relaxed a little, gaze softening. "Is that what you think?" _

_He only looked at her, and she smiled, and watched his brows furrow at the sight. "There are...different kinds of nervousness," she said then, pulling her gaze from his. "Not, uh, all of them are...bad. This – this is a good feeling."_

"_Feeling?" he asked. _

_She nodded, a grin blooming along her mouth. "Yeah. It tells you you're alive. Like this," she said, placing a hand against his chest, behind which the core of his circuitry rested, almost like a human heart. She could feel the gentle whirr of the machinery behind the plating, a surge running through the metal beneath the skin of her palm like a tingle. _

"_Do you feel it?...Gajeel?" _

_He was looking at her, an odd light in his eyes, sharp gaze focused on her hand where it rested against his chest. _

"_Do you feel it?" _

There was a hand on her shoulder, but she couldn't feel it, heart numb and cold but living still, pumping blood and keeping her alive though she'd never once felt so devoid of life. "Levy? It's getting late, and we should be heading back. It's not safe here."

Fingers curling around the part, she nodded, drawing breath like drawing strength, to make her body respond to her commands. _Mechanical – _that's what she felt like, her actions automatic, like responses already programmed for her to follow.

She'd taught him to live, but she hadn't thought he'd done the same to her, that without him she'd feel empty – a shell of her living self, moving, breathing, talking, sleeping by rote. Almost like, like–

_Like a machine. _

Rising to her feet stiffly, Levy held the arm out before her. A broken piece, but of something she couldn't fix. Not this time. Because for all the plating that had held him together, and the coil of the wires she'd come to know by heart, Gajeel hadn't been a machine._ She could have fixed a machine._

But there'd been life in him, and though she could tighten screws and oil rusted joints and _put broken pieces back together_, Levy McGarden, mechanical whiz-kid and Magnolia's foremost professor in humanoid technology, couldn't fix death.

She glanced up at Lily, still standing at her side. A soft patter of rain peppered his short-cropped hair, making the strands cling to his forehead, the droplets like tiny diamonds on his skin and his mechanical arm. He said nothing, and Levy drew breath – _strength –_ and pushed onwards.

She smiled, made the corners of her mouth curve upwards as she pressed the arm close. The rain was creating clean tracks amongst the dirt and dust, water gathering in the furrows of the names carved in the metal.

"Let's go home."

The hurt lingered still – an ache behind her ribs. A part to be changed, but not yet. She'd let it rest a while longer, to remind herself. _To feel. _Because to feel was to be alive, and his memory deserved nothing less than her life, raw and true and burning bright, her sorrow only the first step on a long road without him beside her. But she'd walk it, regardless, with laughter in her throat and her chin held high with all her living grace.

* * *

AN: There will be an epilogue.


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